MultiTree:

Name: Catawba Type: Language Alternate Name: Catawaba Once Spoken in: USA Number of speakers: No known speakers. Ethnic population: 500 (1977 SIL) (Ethnologue) Code: chc Code Standard: ISO 639-3 Documentation: SIL Families: Siouan-Catawban (Siouan) Parent Subgroup: Catawban; Catawban Isolate; Catawba; Eastern Siouan (cata) Brief Description: "Catawba and Woccon are the two languages for which there is documentation in the Catawban branch of the Siouan-Catawba family. As a political unit the Catawba tribe was formed in the first half of the eighteenth century by the consolidation of many small peoples of North and South Carolina. Some of these probably spoke additional Catawban languages while others did not, and they were joined by refugee groups originally from elsewhere in the southeast. After conflict and disease decimated the tribe, some fled to the Choctaws in Oklahoma, and others joined the Cherokee. The Catawba Nation of York County, South Carolina, remains on a reservation near their old homeland, where the language continued to be spoken through the mid-twentieth century. The last speakers retained knowledge of two dialects, Esaw and Saraw, the last hint of the linguistic diversity that had included more than twenty dialects and languages in 1743." Victor Golla, Atlas of the World's Languages 2007 pg. 11

Endangerment Status

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Linguist List Status: Extinct UNESCO Status: Extinct Ethnologue Status: Extinct Sutherland's Red List: Not listed